


we have lingered in the chambers of the sea

by GreenHerons



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/F, Little Mermaid AU, Mersharks, and a little bit of Ingo, except actually more inspired by httyd, mermaid au, merseals, yet another fic involving water
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-03 01:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12738192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenHerons/pseuds/GreenHerons
Summary: Laura had heard a lot about the merfolk of the icy northern waters. They aren’t like us, her own people whispered. Their kingdom is cold. Their blood is cold. Their hearts are colder still. We are more different than alike. Do not go near them if you wish to live.But she hadn’t seen any of that when she’d come across Carmilla. She’d just seen a girl who needed help.[Or: Laura is a sealtailed mermaid and Carmilla a sharktailed mermaid and falling in love is complicated when your people are enemies ]





	1. flood tide

**Author's Note:**

> I got some really kind comments on my previous fic, you are all the loveliest, it gave me courage to try to post some more even though im still really struggling to not hate my writing, so here is some mermaid!hollstein that happened (It was partly inspired by a awesome fic called Sealskinned by ThatAloneOne which is totally worth checking out and also by the Ingo book series) while I was trying to write more pirate!hollstein as some people requested a followup to that fic. I’m still working on it but have this terrible bucket of unedited mess in the meantime. Comments are appreciated always.

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. [...]

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown." - T.S Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_

 

* * *

 

 Later, with the weight of an anchor necklace around her neck that wasn’t hers, and blood on her hands that was and the beginnings of a war on her city’s doorstep Laura would wonder hollowly:  _how did we get here?_

A knife.

A girl in a net.

A choice.

Everything came in circles, more than she could bear.

_How did things fall apart so quickly?_

As she stared across at the assembled army, there was a very small part of her that ached to crawl back to a time before any of this and stay there.  Back to when the monsters were just monsters and they didn’t have names, or voices or hands that trembled in small spaces and reached for her own in the dark. Back when the truth was something to search for and not something to flinch from. Before the rift, before this strange friendship, before –

Before she held someone’s heart in her hands and knew that to keep it beating, she’d have to break it.

“I’ve have the information you want." Laura forced the words out of throat before they choked her.

She wasn’t looking at Carmilla. But she heard her, a tiny shattered  _no._

 _"-_ So, in exchange for her life, we’re gonna make a deal.”

 

 

* * *

 

Her people called it Hastur’s Vein.

A dark sea chasm that cracked the face of the rock open like a predatory grin; it narrowed and narrowed and only a few reckless souls ever ventured far enough along its length to see it widen again, opening out into a honeycomb network of caves. Little pockets of rock where the ocean hoarded moonlight and the murmurs of sailors it drowned long ago.

The quiet was cruel there. Almost hungry. As if, grown in the limited light, it had turned inwards to continually devour itself for sustenance. It was a place of lost voices and hidden teeth and buried stories.

It was also expressly forbidden to merseals by order of King Hollis.

Laura huffed at the thought of her father’s recent edict and subsequent lectures about unsafe areas as she followed the current further in. He meant well but living under what was basically lockdown was getting tiring. She shifted the bag for collecting items slung across her back, face fixed in determination.

It faltered slightly when a distinct tang reached her nose.

Iron in the water.

“What the what? That smells like…” Laura said under her breath. “Is that… _blood_?”

The fear that had been taunting her ever since she slipped away from her father’s guards stretched its fingers further up her spine; icier than the surrounding water.

She could have ignored the scent. Just dismissed it along with the peculiar shift in the pattern of shades mottling the ocean floor as merely a trick of the senses and swam on.

But then Laura had never been very good at not investigating anything.

She wouldn’t have even gone all the way out to this dangerous undersea canyon in the first place with if she were. 

So she tightened her grip on her knife and swam closer.

As Laura approached, the tiny flicker that had caught her attention grew into a clear, recognizable shape. She flinched for a second, heart caught on the unhealed edge of a memory like a fish on a hook.

Something was down there.

 

Something _alive._

 

-Alive, and tangled in what was, unmistakably, a human net.

The crisscross shadow it threw across the seabed  was awfully familiar and Laura fought back a surge of nausea when the memory tugged again, trying to reel her back through time. _Focus, Hollis_. _Creature. Trapped._ She edged further forward, keeping the tall outcropping of rocks as a shield between herself and whatever it was. _You can do this. You can help._

And, with a jolt of shock, Laura corrected herself for the second time that day.

 

-It wasn’t a something,

 

It was a _someone._

 

Someone with a torso very similar to Laura’s own but a sleek, dark grey tail ending in two black-tipped fins much sharper and more angular than any seals’.

 

A mershark.

 

* * *

 

Laura had heard a lot about the merfolk of the icy northern waters. They aren’t like us, her own people whispered. Their kingdom is cold. Their blood is cold. Their hearts are colder still. We are more different than alike. Do not go near them if you wish to live. With only those stories to go on, Laura’s imagination had always conjured up a kind of faceless evil but always vicious, huge and unquestionably monstrous.

It was hard to reconcile that image with the one in front of her now.

A small girl who was barely older than she was.

She was not fighting or thrashing against the heavy mesh that trapped her. In fact she was hardly even moving at all, curled in on herself, her chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly. The occasional weak thump of her tailfin against the ocean floor was the only sign of what might have been a struggle. The source of the blood scent was clear now too: a long vicious slash running up her tail and side and staining the finely woven seafibre shirt she wore with crimson. Her left tailfin looked the worst damaged, nearly sliced clean through.

Her eyes were the sharpest kind of sad Laura had ever seen.

-Sad and dark and swallowing. Intelligent. The furthest thing from the mindless killers of Laura’s people’s tales. They flicked black and forth, following the fish swimming past the net.

Unlike merseals, mersharks didn’t need to surface for air, Laura remembered, making out the line of gills at the girl's neck. But they still needed to eat.  Suddenly, the hopelessness clouding her stare made a terrible kind of sense. The way one arm was outstretched like at one point she’d made an attempt to try to reach, to catch something. 

Laura’s chest clenched. She swallowed heavily, palm pressed against her heart to keep the pieces in.

How many hours, days had this girl been down here, starving?  Watching food darting by, mere inches out of grasp. How long had it taken for before she’d given up and just started lying there-

-just waiting to die.  

 

* * *

 

It was the glint of moonlight on her knife that betrayed her. A single ray: catching on the blade’s edge as Laura shifted at just the right angle to send multiple beams scattering through the cavern.

The girl’s head snapped up, twisting to zero in on Laura's hiding place with the precision of a predator.

Except, once again the emotion on her face was not anything Laura had expected: not anger, not hunger, not hatred.

Only surprise and fear, and the faintest flicker of something else she couldn’t identify, before it was extinguished by defeat again. 

The knife’s handle was smooth in Laura’s grip. Perfectly balanced. A few weeks ago, newly snatched up from the floor of shipwreck she shouldn’t have been exploring, Laura had marvelled at its near weightlessness.

Now, suddenly it felt heavier than anything she’d ever held.

The girl's chest fell, gills fluttering as she exhaled.

A breath in,

And out,

Eyes closing against an expected blow

 

* * *

 

Laura never brought it down.

The sound of sawing rope was barely audible and yet somehow deafening. Louder than Laura’s pounding pulse in her ears as she worked away at it with hurried shaky movements. No creature of the sea deserved be like this, twisted up and helpless. 

The net fell apart slowly, then all at once.

 For a second after being freed the girl remained motionless, blinking.

Then she lurched upright, her fists curled and posture instantly terse and defensive. Lips pulled back to bare razor sharp incisors in a clear ‘stay back’ warning. 

Her gaze fixed on the weapon still in Laura’s hand.

 “Yeah okay knife, you don’t like the knife, look I’m putting it away now.” Despite not being entirely sure if the mershark could even understand her, Laura tried for a pacifying tone “See? I’m not going to attack you. So it would be really, really nice if you returned the favour- ow…”  Laura broke off when she nicked her finger on the knife as she tried to sheathe it again. She brought to her mouth to suck on the cut, cursing.

It turned into a cry of pain.

White, brilliant pain, as an inhuman force smashed her back against the rockface. It was almost eclipsed by the immediate terror that shot through Laura as she choked, gasping against the arm now braced against her windpipe. Ears ringing, the points where her spine and the back of her skull had collided with the stone throbbing viciously.

The girl’s irises, now only centimetres from her own, were completely overtaken by black. Those teeth almost scraping Laura’s jugular.

It was Laura’s turn to close her eyes.

 _Sorry Dad_ she thought, and then _Mom_ , steadying herself.

And then, just as quickly as the pressure was there it relented.

Laura scrambled back, diving for the caverns mouth. One single instinct overwhelming everything: get away.

The last glimpse she got of the mershark was her staring down at the hand she’d snatched away with a kind of dazed horror, like it was an alien object rather than her own limb. Flexing her fingers as if Laura’s skin had somehow scalded her

She tried to pretend she’d imagined the whispered “Wait!” from behind her

 

* * *

 

“Laura Eileen Hollis! What’s this I hear about you swimming away from the guards _again_?!”

Laura froze, halfway past the gateway arch and into the atrium. 

“Um. Hey Pops?” Laura crossed her arms behind her back and offered a grin that she hoped didn’t look as sheepish as it felt. “I was exploring?” Any reassurance she'd felt at the familiar surroundings was quickly being replaced by nervous guilt and she avoided her father’s eyes, focusing instead on a statue in the corner. Its stonework was crumbling, much like everything else. Laura could still remember a time when this whole palace had glittered, polished agate columns stretching towards the rock ceiling, the walls full of vibrant corals and elaborate mosaics swirling underfoot. But the only things that shone nowadays were the increasing amount of weapons that the guards, and recently civilians as well, were accumulating as Vordenburg’s influence seemed to grow. Even the bioluminescent algae that lit up the walls seemed to have dimmed of late. 

 “Laura.” Her dad's brows bent into a stressed frown. He rubbed his temples “Listen the council meeting is in five minutes but you better believe we’ll be discussing this later little lady.”

“Dad-”

“I swear you’re going to send me to an early grave.” With a shake of his head, he turned to leave.

“Dad. Wait!?" 

“Yes?”

"Can I ask something? Completely random question.”

"Go ahead."

“Um so mersharks? You talk about them a lot. Have you ever heard of a mershark…uh not killing a merseal when they met one? Like, if they maybe-”

“Sweetheart,” Her father’s voice was kind but firm as he cut her off, leaving no room for argument. “I know you want to see the best in everything. But mersharks are predators, first and foremost. The main thing you should remember about them, is they always, always go for the kill.”

Laura swallowed down the second question that rose in her throat at that.

She didn’t say it as she sat at her father’s side through the meeting.

She didn’t say it when Vordenburg interrupted the other council members, charter in one hand and his papery voice growing loud and vicious as he ranted about ‘the mershark plague’ and ‘extermination plans’

She didn’t say it when she passed Mel and Danny, and the two Summer Guards deep in discussion about the new measures to kill intruders   

She didn’t say it when Lafontaine and Perry came over.

It was only later in the safety of her empty room that she finally voiced it. A whisper to the ghost of the girl who still lingered in her head.

“If mersharks always go for the kill … then why didn’t _you_?”

 

* * *

 

The only thing possibly more dangerous than freeing a trapped mershark, Laura reflected, would be returning to the place you freed them the next day, on some poorly thought out impulse to provide first aid. That would be reckless and stupid and obviously something you did if you had a death wish or something.

“Yep. Definitely a death wish.” Laura muttered as she swam towards the cavern entrance, clutching the sack of medical supplies.

A quick peek around the rocks revealed a familiar figure, circling.

Great. There went the hope that it been a crazy dream. She had really had saved a mershark.

Laura glanced out again.

The half-light in the cavern was soft and eerie.  It caught the angles and planes of the mershark’s face, made the contrast between her dark hair and pale skin even more striking. Laura had always scoffed at human stories describing merfolk as ‘hauntingly beautiful’ but suddenly the description made a little more sense: there was something mesmerising about this girl, the languid grace with which she moved, tail curving through the water. Which - Laura’s instinct about her injury looked to be correct, she winced after every few strokes and stopped, glancing down at it. The strips she’d torn off the bottom of her shirt off to try to make a bandage –Laura tried adamantly not to notice the distracting amount of skin on this had left display- appeared almost soaked through with blood. Nevertheless she attempted to swim forward again, teeth gritted against the pain.

“Oh Zennor, here goes nothing.” Laura finally pushed out from behind her hiding place.

Instantly, the mershark whipped around.

A hiss escaped her as she took in Laura, lingering on her tail, the soft silvery brown fur that marked her as sealfolk. So different from her own. “ _Reun._ ” The word slipped through the girls teeth, low and shocked.

 “Morvleydh, _”_ Laura breathed out in return in the same tongue, repressing the urge to recoil from the sound of it. It seemed too stark out loud, too real …. _morvleydh morvleydh…._ _Shark, shark, shark._ Everything she was taught to be afraid of, echoing off the cavern walls.

And then “Hang on…you speak High Mermish?”

The girl raised an eyebrow. 

“No,” she responded flatly in Common, crossing her arms

Even worse. She’d saved a _smartass_ mershark

“Here I was half convinced I imagined it, but no” - there was incredulity in her voice and expression - “it really was a merseal that cut me loose, of all things. Haven’t you ever heard of the Big Bad Shark, little pup?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of thanking people for saving your life?” Laura retorted hotly, words falling out before she could think, then immediately winced. _No, no,_ _bad idea Laura. Don’t argue with the thing that could eat you-_

A slight twitch of the other girl’s lips “I’m not going to eat you.”

“Annnd I said that our loud.”

“You’re still doing it cutie.”

Silence.

 “Why did you come back?” The girl asked, at the exact same time Laura blurted “I have some stuff I think can help your injury! And I have questions!”

 “My…injury?”

“Your tail. It’s hurt? So is your side.”

“You came back for that?”

“Also the questions. A lot of them actually. About mersharks.”

The girl considered her, head tilted to the side.

“You’re strange,” she proclaimed finally.

“Gee, thanks.”

“No I mean you’re _strange,_ ” she repeated a little more vehemently, forming fists at her sides. She leaned forward directly into Laura’s space, looming over her. “What precisely is your plan? I mean as far as you seem concerned I am a killer. And yet not only do you cut me free, you come back with an offer of more help? Wanting to know more? That’s not something people _do_. What’s your actual motive little pup?”

 “I don’t have one!” Laura shouted, throwing up her hands “I’m just trying to help okay! And maybe learn more about mersharks in the process because I’ve never met one before and we’re supposed to stay away from you but you didn’t kill me yesterday which according to everyone is impossible, so excuse me for trying to figure out if my entire life is a lie! Or maybe it isn’t, maybe my people _are_ right and mersharks and merseals can never be anything but be enemies and that’s just the way the world is, but that still doesn’t mean I have to stop helping people. I freed you because nobody should have to die in a net like that. You might be a killer, but even you deserve better.”

The girl blinked. Stilled.

Laura waited.

Then, some of the hostility seemed to leave her posture with a sigh and she backed away. Features softening fractionally.   

“Okay.” Her voice sounded rougher when she finally spoke again.

“Okay?”

“Okay you can help me with whatever’s in that bag of yours. And I can possibly answer some of your questions. Possibly.”

Laura let out a relieved breath, glad to have finally reached some sort of detente. “Great! I’ve got bandages, and healing salve, a special kind of sea moss that helps stops bleeding. And some food. Not that I know what you eat, besides uh…”  Laura trailed off rapidly, realising that finishing that sentence with _us_ wasn’t the best idea for a number of reasons. Hastily, she started pulling the bandages out of the bag instead

A sigh. “You can stop twitching about that too. If I was going to eat you would I not have already done that by now? Or the other day?”

“Fair point,” Laura said, then hesitated, hands full of supplies. “Um? Can I?"

“Yes. Fine,” the girl said, nonchalance forced into the words, her shoulders rising an inch towards her ears almost like she was embarrassed.

Very, very tentatively Laura reached out to unwind the makeshift bandages.

The girl’s tail was warmer that she expected, slightly rough like sand to touch but not unpleasant. At closer distance, the subtle color variation of it was visible, how it transitioned from silver to slate grey and then to black at the tips.    

Laura could see other details too from this near, the numerous faint scars running across the mershark’s entire body, her eyelashes dipping against her cheekbone, the sharp line of her jaw...  Laura realized she was staring and she quickly looked down.

Gradually, she fell into a steady rhythm, cleaning each part of the wound, pressing a wad of moss against the gash to help stop the blood flow before wrapping it again in the bandages she’d brought. Even when looking down Laura felt the other girl’s gaze burning the back of her neck, scrutinizing her as she worked with an intensity that, combined with their proximity, made Laura cheeks redden.

She blushed further when she finished with the girl’s tail and had to start wrapping under her ribs.

“So. In the spirit of this newfound truce.” Laura started, mainly to distract herself how soft the girl’s skin was every time she brushed her stomach accidentally or the way her breath hitched slightly each time it happened, teeth pressing against her lip. “Can I ask what your name is? It’s getting a bit weird just referring to you as ‘the mershark’ in my head.”

The girl hesitated for a moment. “It’s Carmilla.”

“Carmilla,” Laura dre out the three syllables. “I’m Laura.”

The smirk reappeared “I know. It was mixed in your little babble earlier.”

Laura flushed, tying a final knot. “There. All done.”

 “Hey um?”

 “Yes?”

 “Thank you.” It was quiet and genuine and Laura was taken aback. Every time she thought she had a grasp on this girl-

“Well, anyway,” just as quickly as it had softened into something more sincere, the careless tone was back. “Its been a blast cutie but I should-“  Carmilla  slid off the rock and made as if to swim for the exit   

 “Wait!” Laura hand shot out to grab her wrist.“ Listen. You can’t go back yet.”

“What?”

“Yeah, there’s no way you’re gonna get far without that reopening. You’re technically in Merseal territory here too and lately my-my king and the council have been stepping up patrols. There’s no telling if you’d run into one as soon as you got out of the Vein. Not to mention the storms that can pick up around this part of the coast are not something you should swim in until you’re healed.”

“And do tell, how long exactly is that supposed to take?”

“Well I’m not sure how fast your healing is compared to ours, but I’d guess” Laura paused “about a month. And you’ll need to change the bandages in the meantime every few days”

“A month!? And I'm supposed to what? just lounge around here in the meantime, with nothing to do except wait for you to occasionally drop in?”

“Uh…Yes?” 

Carmilla scowled and then slumped back down on the rock

 “Well. In that case, looks like I’m you’re new cavemate, sweetheart.”

 


	2. high tide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long (and also sorry if the pacing is off or its too full of exposition.) My personal life has been a whirlpool of its own lately. Thanks for all your wonderful comments on the first chapter! Feel free to let me know what you think of this one

  
The hardest thing to do when you go back underwater,

is talk about what the sky was like. ― Iain S. Thomas

 

* * *

 

“Good afternoon,”  the low purr was inches from her ear.

 Laura shrieked. “ _Carmilla_!”

She whirled around in time to see the mershark melt out of the dark, looking like as ever she was carved from it herself, all sleek lines and smirk and shadowlike tail.

“Have I mentioned that I hate it when you do that?”

Carmilla blinked slowly, shrugging. She moved through the water with sluggish, lazy strokes. “A few times. But can you blame me? The bunched up face you make when you’re surprised is hilarious butterfish. "

Laura scowled.

“Yes that one. Anyway did you find much?”

“Not much exciting today but here you go. Today’s haul.” Laura tipped the contents of the sack onto the ocean floor.

Carmilla leaned over to get a better view, a gleam of interest breaking through the apathy she usually wore like an exoskeleton. “That’s a watch, it’s for telling the time,” she said, pointing “Fork. Coins. Oh a chess set.”

“Chess,” Laura echoed, lifting up the checked board. “I knew it was some kind of game but I didn’t know the name until now.”

“I haven’t been able to ascertain the rules yet though. Hmm. More coins. A chalice. A book, oh” - Carmilla paused over a small square of plastic -“that’s a teflon. The humans talk to each other from far away through them.”

Slowly, over the days since they’d met, the two of them  had begun sharing small bits of information about their differing cultures and lives and along with the medical supplies, Laura had started bringing back things she found or salvaged while exploring instead of hiding them in her room. Carmilla, in return would offer observations, often about what she had noticed humans using them for. Slowly the cave was turning into a grotto of found things, different to the cold emptiness it had been previously. With every handful of glowing crystals she managed to liberate from her father’s palace and bring back her it became lighter too.  Less oppressive.

The oldest law of the sea was that of give and take. Exchange. The tide left and returned to shore. The waves stole rocks from the cliffside but always brought them back to a beach somewhere else. All merseals knew this. Perhaps unsurprising then, that acts of trade between people had long been upheld in Laura’s culture as important. They were part of a pattern that tied you together and to the world. Binding, even.

Was this odd exchange tying her and Carmilla together too?

Maybe, Laura thought as she watched Carmilla’s mouth slowly slipping into a half smile as she continued her examination, she didn’t really mind if it were.

Carmilla's apparent fascination with human was surprising: Laura had expected to her be dismissive or even derisive about the land-dwellers, not interested in them. But then again, this whole thing had started with a question about Laura’s knife.

“Can I see that?” She had asked, after Laura was just finishing bandaging her tail on her third visit, gesturing towards the weapon.

“Uh sure?”

The knife was examined intently for several moments, Carmilla turning it over in her hands. “As I thought, this is metal. Human made. Don’t you have laws about that like we do?”

“Yes.” Laura chewed her lip. It wasn’t like Carmilla was exactly in the position to _tell_ anyone, right? “We’re not supposed to use them. My father says metal doesn’t belong in moryow. That it taints the water. We only use natural stuff like stone to make things like jewellery or tools. We never even used to have weapons at all, before.”

“Before?”

“Before one of our council members – Vordenburg- started gathering followers and power. He hates everyone who isn’t a merseal. He’s the one that that started the patrols. It started with arming the guards with spears but now its ordinary folk too.” She shivered “Dad won’t say what they are for but we don’t hunt fish that way so it can’t be for that. I’m afraid it’s-”

“-you’re afraid it’s for people like me,” Carmilla finished. “I know a little of what that’s like.” She passed Laura the knife back by the handle “My mother also despises anyone who isn’t our species.”

Laura gaze shot to her. Carmilla had never mentioned anything about her family before. “It’s one of many subjects on which we do not see eye to eye. Unfortunately the majority of my people share her sentiments as well.”

“We’re alike.”

“What?”

 “When we first spoke you said I was strange because everything I’d been taught so far told me I  shouldn’t trust you but I helped you anyway. But you don’t treat me like how you were supposed to either. So we’re alike.”

 “Perhaps so,” Carmilla murmured. 

“I’m just thankful we don’t know exactly where you live. I don’t want to think what people like Vordenburg would do with that information” Laura admitted, shuddering. "Wait. Will your mother be looking for you?”

“I doubt so. Mersharks are more solitary than I imagine you seals are. We only tend to closely bond to only a few others and we mostly travel and hunt alone, sometimes for lengthy periods of time. I’m hoping she won’t notice my absence for a while at least.”

“Okay. That’s good." Laura hesitated. "And you _don’t_ think I’m weird to be curious about humans?”

“It would be hypocritical to.” Another shrug. “I used to watch them frequently when I was younger. They’re surprisingly inventive at times. Even if they get lots of things absurdly wrong about us, like the whole fish tails and siren singing nonsense.”

“You don’t sing?”

“No we do but it’s not to entice men into drown. It’s just a way to communicate over long distance and recognise each other.”

“Oh we do that too!”

 

* * *

 

"Will you sing?"

"Absolutely not." 

"Hm."

"I can hear you pouting sundance." 

 

* * *

 

 

“What the finned hell is this?”

Carmilla held up the offending object with mingled amusement and disgust.

“Seaweed.”

“I can see that.” An eyeroll. “I mean why did you bring it?

“Hey! Like I said, I don’t know exactly what you eat okay? I was trying to bring lots in case.”

“Your people actually eat this?"

 “Yes, and all kind of plants. And fish.”

“Oh that’s a relief. For a second there I thought you were going to say you filter fed on plankton like a whale.”

“Gross,” Laura replied “I have teeth thank you very much.” She flashed a wide grin at Carmilla to illustrate her point and was surprised when colour crept slightly up the other girl’s neck. “What?”

 “Nothing. And we don’t eat plants at all. Fish yes, squid, eels, occasionally seals or even birds if they fly too close…”

“…and humans and merseals?” Laura's voice was very small.

Carmilla’s sigh was resigned “I guess we were going to have to talk about this eventually. Yes, sometimes. It’s hard for us distinguish between creatures once we smell blood and we aren’t really raised to be careful either.”

“Is that why you attacked me at first? Because you smelled the blood? Like a shark blood frenzy kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“But you stopped.”

“I did but that’s not- don’t go deluding yourself that im some kind of bastion of nobility, okay. I’m far from it cutie.”

Something in her face, in Laura’s throat, made the next words shake “Have...have you ever killed anyone?”

 “Yes. Not for a long time but yes.”

Her stomach sank.

Carmilla shook her head “I’m a mershark cutie. A certain amount of murder just comes with the territory. And I don’t think you realise how lucky…my family, many of the others would have killed you the moment they were set free.”

“So I guess an invitation to family dinner is off the cards then?”

“Don’t even joke about that. I would rather be condemned to that net again ten times over than ever see you in the hands of my mother. The things she…” Carmilla broke off, clenching her jaw. “My mother is not a merciful person cutie.”

“I-”

“Can we just talk about something else?” Carmilla’s tone was soft and wearied. That sadness from the first time they met more visible than ever in her face.

 Laura frowned. Beneath the apathy there was a kind of damage to Carmilla that would be hard not to notice: a flinch buried under the other girl’s skin. Her heart twisted at the sudden thought that someone might have put it there. That that someone might have been her mother.

There were so many more questions Laura wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue.

After all, there were plenty of things she was not telling Carmilla, either.

 

* * *

 

 “Have you got enough food?”

As if on cue there was an audible rumbling, the omen of approaching waves. The heightened tang of ozone almost buzzed through the water. 

“Yes. For the fiftieth time I have enough food to outlast this stupid storm.”

Laura winced. The words were delivered with a bite that hadn’t been present since their first interactions. After she’d relayed the warning about the storm to Carmilla yesterday the mershark had become strangely withdrawn and sullen, quips turning into retorts, her tone more caustic.

Carmilla must have detected the slight hurt in Laura’s expression because her own turned rueful. “Look, cutie, im sorry im just. I’m tired is all. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.” Not really reassured, Laura changed the subject, “I did finally remember to bring you a new shirt as well! Since your old one is all torn up.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow, the flicker of her old smirk appearing

“Trying to get me out of my clothes now?”

 “That’s- that’s not! You, you, incorrigible... _stop smirking_!” Squeaking, she shoved the garment at Carmilla and turned away in a indignant flurry of bubbles before the other girl could see how red she had gone

That had been happening more often too: the teasing comments. If it had been anyone else Laura would have thought it flirting, but it was Carmilla. She just seemed to get a special enjoyment out of making Laura blush. Laura’s stomach swooped each time it happened, even if she knew it was just in jest.

A loud crash shook the space.

“There it is,”  Laura noted “Loud right Carmilla?”

There was no answer.

She turned back around to find Carmilla motionless, her face drained of colour. Stare wide and glazed.

“Carm! What happened? What’s wrong?”  

Carmilla's mouth moved but no sound made it out. She didn’t seem to be able to reply. The silence was punctuated by another crash and Carmilla flinched. Violently. 

“You’re afraid of storms.” Laura realised out loud.

She shot one last look at the entrance.

If she didn’t leave now she wouldn’t be able to go home. And she hadn’t been kidding about how long storms could possibly last out here.

But Carmilla.

She hadn’t left Carmilla before.

Even when she didn’t know her she hadn’t left her.

She couldn’t leave her now.

 

* * *

 

 

Its true malice unleashed, the ocean raged around them.

Waves crashed against the rocks outside the cavern with an ear-shattering force that made Carmilla’s lips go white every time. She curled tighter and tighter the longer it went on, tail drawn up to her chest and violent tremors running through her entire body.

Torn between wanting to help Carmilla ground herself but fearful too much contact would make it worse Laura settled for keeping her hand pressed against her back just below her dorsal fin, soothing words falling endlessly from her lips she wasn’t even sure Carmilla had heard. But she kept saying them anyway, helplessly.

She could feel the reverberation of the storm through the walls. At one point the cracking of thunder reached such volume Laura was afraid the lightning that followed would cleave entire sky outside open.

At first she was glad when, after what must have been hours, Carmilla finally collapsed into an exhausted slumber. Unable to stay awake any longer. The storm was finally starting to relent and Laura hoped sleep would bring the shattered, petrified Mershark some temporary relief.

Except Carmilla didn’t stop shuddering in her sleep.

If anything it got worse.

Her whole body tensed, arms fixed ramrod to her sides. Her face twisting with some desperate unseen fear. She muttered, shifting restlessly and a few minutes later she started crying out. Laura made out _no_  and  _im sorry_ and _Ell. please. dont. i'm sorry. Mother_ in a rising crescendo of panic.

Every word destroyed Laura a bit more.

“Carm!” Laura shook her, unable to bear it any longer “Carmilla! Wake up!”

“Huh?” The rush of relief she experienced when those brown eyes fluttered open shocked her in its intensity.  Why all were her emotions surrounding this girl so strong when she’d only known her for such a short time? It was bewildering.

Carmilla’s pupils widened in confusion and disorientation, reeling. They calmed immediately when they found Laura “Cutie?” She rasped.  

“Hey, you’re okay. I’m here.” She looped her hand gently around Carmilla’s wrist, nervous to offer any other kind of comfort but not wanting to be too far from her. To let go of her. “You had a nightmare but you’re okay.”

“The storm?”

“It’s dying down now but I didn’t want to leave you.”

Carmilla gazed up at her with a kind of wonder that made Laura’s chest hurt:  both sweet and painful at once “You stayed,” she said hoarsely. Suprised.

Was Carmilla not used to people staying?

“Of course I did,” Laura said. “You’re my friend.”

She hadn’t said it out loud before but something in the words felt warm and true. A glow inside her that only grew when Carmilla, relaxing further, let out a drowsy hum and shifted her hand so that their fingers were linked “You’re my friend too.” She mumbled.

And then after a moment she cracked an eyelid open again.

“Although tell anyone I said that and I’ll kill you.”

“Sssh Carm don’t ruin the moment...and anyway threats won't work. I'm not scared of you anymore.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Okay. Enough.” Carmilla put down the squid she’d been chewing on and fixed Laura with a piercing look. “Just say it.”

“What?”.

“You’ve been giving me these weird, sad looks since yesterday. I thought it was just because of before but you’re still doing it. Why?”

“You were saying things in your sleep,” Laura admitted.

 “What did I say?”

“Uh you were apologising and calling out names, Ell, and your mother. And saying sorry. You totally don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want or anything. ” Laura added quickly. “But that’s why I was staring. Cause it made me worried for you. Sorry.”

“No don't apologise. I just… can we go above the water?” Carmilla asked and her voice was very empty, “Because I think talking about this is going to make me cry and you can’t cry underwater.”

Laura shattered a little bit at that.

“Whatever you need,” she whispered.

She helped Carmilla swim over to the flattest among the handful of rocks which rose slightly above the surface and then pull herself up.

They sat there for a while in silence.

 “I told you before that my mother is cruel," Carmilla said finally, so quietly Laura almost didn’t hear the tremor in it.“ Most of her cruelty is in her words. Growing up, she could destroy you with those alone. But when that wasn’t enough she had this chest. I think it used to hold treasure once. When I did something that- that particularly displeased her she would lock me inside. It had holes to let the water in so I didn’t die but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t“ - her voice broke - “it was so, so dark in there.”

Laura hugged her.

She felt more than heard Carmilla’s breath catch. She went rigid and for a second Laura panicked, apologies surging to her lips, but then Carmilla relaxed minutely and pulled her closer. Her tail wrapped around Laura’s waist, her arms around her neck. Her warmth pressing against her collarbone. Carmilla smelled like salt, of course she did but underneath that was something wintry, not unlike the scent that the wind sometimes carried from the north: snow and water just after the icemelt. 

Even as the water on the rest of her skin dried she could feel her shoulder growing wet. “One time I was in there was a storm,” Carmilla breathed. “That’s why.”  

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” Laura whispered, her own eyes stinging. “And I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

She wasn’t sure how long they sat there. Laura carded her fingers through dark messy hair, chest aching each time Carmilla’s frame shook with a ragged sob. Carmilla’s fingers dug into her back.

 “I’ll memorise the timetables,” she said with sudden fierceness. “I'll learn what time the patrols are, or I’ll bribe Danny or Mel. Or something. I don’t care what, whatever it takes, I’ll find out when it’s safe and I’ll help you get out of this cave more often, even if its only for a few hours.”

Carmilla didn’t say anything.

But the way her grip tightened around Laura said enough.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Laura hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Hadn't meant to drift off curled against Carmilla's side. But when she woke to find her nose tucked under Carmilla’s jaw and realised they had somehow ended up even more tightly tangled together overnight it was harder to silence the tiny voice in her that said ‘friends’ wasn’t really a big enough word for this.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re heading out to the clearwater _again_?! You’ve been gone a lot lately.”

“Most afternoons in fact.”

“We just wanted to check that you are doing okay Laura.”

Danny’s tone was accusatory. Lafontaine’s was inquisitive. Perry’s concerned. Mel just snorted like she couldn’t care less what Laura was up to and Laura appreciated her even more for that in the face of the other’s scrutinising stares. The four of them had accosted her as she was trying to sneak out through the gardens and now she was surrounded. Seriously, first her Dad, now her friends?

Laura hesitated, sea grass waving about her waist.   

 “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“Its just after your mom-“

“It’s not like that. It’s not like that I promise,” Laura said quickly. “I’m just bored here I guess.”

“Well the migration will be here soon and then we’ll all have a change of scene.”

The migration. Between everything Laura had almost forgotten their annual journey, following the warmer climes and the movement of the fish. They’d move from the Summer Citadel to the Winter Citadel, Mel and Danny and the other Summer Guards would swap with Kirsch and the other Winter Guards.  And she’d be miles and miles away from here.

Just as she was whenever Carmilla’s smirk showed the glints of too sharp incisors, every time her tail was silver and strange and nothing like her own Laura was stung by the reminder that that there was a time limit on this.  

Carmilla would heal. Laura would go south. Would they even ever see each other again?

It made seeing her now feel even more important.

“So. Is this you trying to stop me from going?” It carried a note of challenge, one they shrank back a little from. Laura was the princess, that she outranked them was an omnipresent fact and they all knew it.

“No just be careful okay. There have been increased mershark sightings around here lately. Kirsch says Theo says Vordenburg thinks they’re looking for something.”

Mersharks. Even encircled by the others, Laura was struck by a sense of deep aloneness. Distance. They saw mersharks the way she had once. A story at night. A silhouette in the deep. Something to be feared.   

But for her, mersharks weren’t just a faceless danger anymore. _Carmilla_ was a mershark. Carmilla with her quiet wit and sharp intelligence and the surprising softness under all those layers of carelessness. Carmilla who was mysterious but Laura was slowly learning to read: the furrow of her brows that meant she was contemplative, the curl of her spine when she felt vulnerable: like she was folding into herself in attempt to make herself impossibly smaller. How she didn’t really make a sound when she was amused but you could see the echo of laughter in her eyes.

 The oldest law of the sea was that of give and take, but Laura realised suddenly in that moment she’d been keeping more than she realised. She’d been memorising Carmilla’s expressions and gestures and characteristics and tucking them away somewhere in a corner of her heart like each was something to precious to let go. All the time she’d known her. Carmilla was a part of her now.

How could she even begin to explain that to her friends?

 “Kirsch is well meaning and sweet but kind of an idiot, Theo is a thug and I wouldn’t trust Vordenburg if my life depended on it,” Laura pointed out instead. Laf mumbled something under their breath that might have been ‘totally accurate.’  “But thanks for the talk anyway! See you later.” She shot away before her friends could protest or try to offer further warnings.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Laura hummed a contented, wordless tune. Water rushing across her skin and green blurring by as the pair darted in and out of the dense, tangled kelp. Carmilla had had regarded the forest with surprise initially “A downgwylgos?”

“it’s the safest place outside of the cave. I wish we could go further up into the shallows or the rockpools but even though Mel swore the Summer Guards would be out for a scouting trip there’s still a risk-“

“- and here if we do see anyone we have far better chance of hiding or getting away. Pursuit is harder in the kelp forests than the clearwater,” Carmilla finished with a nod. “Smart thinking cutie.” 

Laura had to stop herself from staring too much at the quiet happiness and the sunlight across Carmilla’s face then, two things she’d never properly seen lighting it before. The risk of what they were doing was worth the moment she saw how much more alive Carmilla became out here. More open. 

Even though she seemed to be swimming with surprising ease Laura wondered if Carmilla was worried about her injury because she was sticking closer to her than she had expected, rarely straying more than a few tailengths away. Occasionally she’d do something distracting like reach out and touch Laura’s wrist to draw her attention to something- one of the shoals of multi-colored fish dashing past them or a bizarre sea creature shuffled around on the floor- or she’d just idly brush a hand against her back.  Laura’s pulse spiked every time, for some reason.

“Hey!”

Laura couldn’t help but start laughing when she glanced over again and saw Carmilla trying to shake off a lobster which had somehow got attached to her arm.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 “Look at this.”

Carmilla shook the sand off her find, and Laura’s mouth fell slightly open when she recognised the type of conch she was holding out.

“Is there something wrong?”

 “No. It’s just…these kind are rare. They’re special for my people.”

“Currency?” Carmilla guessed

“No uh, when merseals…want to marry someone we give them this kind of shell. Supposedly if you whisper into one, no matter how far away the other person is they’ll hear it in it.”

The blush spreading over Laura’s nose and ears as she explained was mirrored on Carmilla as the mershark realised the gesture she’d unwittingly echoed. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to-“

“Its fine. You didn’t know or anything. You weren’t proposing to me. As if,” she chuckled nervously, shaking her head to clear it of the image. “Actually, now I’m curious-“

“When aren’t you, sundance?” Carmilla mumbled fondly.  

“- Cause’ we use shells and I’m pretty sure humans give each other rings. Do your people have anything like that?”

Nodding, Carmilla pulled a necklace from beneath the collar of her shirt. There was a small anchor charm hanging off the chain, carved from what looked to be obsidian. “We make one of these when we come of age and then we give them to another person we want to share our life with and receive theirs in return. Not exactly identical, but the same concept more or less”

“It’s pretty.” Laura noted.

“Thanks.” She tucked it away again.

Laura floated idly for a few moments on her back.

“You look a little pale. Are you alright?” The depth of concern in Carmilla’s voice made Laura melt.

“Yeah, I just need to go up surface soon.” 

“Ah. I sometimes forget you merseals need to breathe,” Carmilla said, amused, then her face fell and she swallowed. “Hey. I uh need to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” Laura’s pulse was quickening strangely. 

“About my tail. I think its h-“

Carmilla cut off suddenly, freezing.  

“Carm?”

The mershark’s ear fins were twitching, her head swivelling. Listening for something.

“Laura.”  A horrible foreboding thudded through her. Carmilla never used her name. “Laura we have to go. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t you hear that?”

Laura focused and sure enough, she could pick up a distant melody.

“That song: it’s a recognition pattern. It’s a mershark. And they’re not that far.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“Yeah.” Carmilla looked grim “It’s my brother, Will. He’s searching. We need to move!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Carmilla swore.

“It’s getting louder.”

“We can make it.”

“Not at this speed.” Carmilla said. She was right. The wide, slow stream they were cresting along the back of would never get them away in time.

Laura fought down her panic. Closing her eyes, she focused on her surroundings.

After a second she found what she was looking for. “This way!”

“What are you-“

“Just a little further…there!”

Finding currents required sensing and seeing at once, you had to pay attention to the feel of them, how they tugged and twisted on the water around you and then visualise how they moved and where they were heading. This one looked exactly as it had in Laura’s mind’s eye when it came into view, like a thick green glass rope. Immensely powerful, it twisted and coiled out of sight with all the strength and muscle of an underwater python.

The sort of current Laura would never attempt to ride normally.

A rip current.

Grim understanding immediately darkened Carmilla’s face. She knew the mershark felt the terrible force with which it was pulling everything around into it, just as she did.

 “Well. It’s definitely fast, but the flow looks very treacherous, see the swerve.”

“Do we have any other choice?”

The haunting singing was getting nearer by. The water echoed with it.  

 “No. We don’t.” Carmilla said.

Laura wasn’t sure what was making her feel terrified now, the danger behind her, the danger ahead of her or her growing need for air. She gulped, tensing.

 A hand slipped inside hers.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” Carmilla said and Laura’s heart felt so full then she thought it would crack open “Hold on, alright?”

They plunged towards the current.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Laura had been inside fast currents before but nothing like this. She let out a shout of exhilarated terror, the sound pulled away from her by the water and down the helix.

Once you broke through the roar of the wall the inside of the current seemed calm, like the eye of the storm, but she could feel the race, the force of it surrounding her nonetheless and outside the ocean rushed past at impossible, speed.

There was no way to fight its power, you had to let it carry you. Forwards. Further. Faster.

“Laura!” Carmilla yelled “The rocks!”

Sure enough, they were hurtling towards a mass of sharp black stones.

The jagged shapes growing larger and larger.

 If they didn’t exit now they’d be thrown against them.

“Carm! Now!” With a powerful stroke of her tail, she wrenched them both sideways.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ice. Oxygen. Laura’s head broke the surface of the water. She gasped, sucking a desperate lungful of air down into her pounding chest- so cold it almost hurt. And another, and another.

“Well that was a kick,”  she wheezed and then the relief spread across her body until she felt herself laughing with it, a little hysterical. She flopped over on her back.

Cool fingers squeezed her own. Carmilla. She’d kept her promise. She hadn’t let go.

The ocean surface was calm, giving no hint of the turmoil churning just beneath. So calm, that for a second, Laura had the dizzying impression of floating in sky: the sea reflecting everything above it so entirely you almost couldn’t tell the two infinities apart. It wasn’t quite night yet but darkness was falling and dotted here and there were the beginnings of stars.

“I thought I’d never see them again.” Carmilla said quietly and she turned to find her smiling up at where they clustered overhead.

Not her usual half smile or teasing smirk. A real, genuine smile that reached all the way across her face and to her eyes. Soft, broken open with awe. It was breathtakingly young.

Something in Laura’s throat felt suddenly white hot, too thick to speak around. Like she’d swallowed a mouthful of those stars. Like there was light stuck inside of her lungs now, her veins, her blood, running liquid to her heart.

“Laura.” Carmilla said, looking back at her but the smile hadn’t faded, if anything it had got brighter and their faces were so close Laura had to keep herself from shaking.

She wanted to stay in this moment forever and she wanted desperately to move, to close the space between them and see if Carmilla’s mouth was as soft as it looked -

She wanted to kiss Carmilla.

When did that happen?

Laura didn’t know. But it was suddenly all she could think about. All she wanted.

For one, molten second, she almost gave in.

But then she shook herself. 

So, she wanted to kiss Carmilla.

There was no way Carmilla would want to kiss her back.

She swallowed hard.  “We should- I should head back now. The cave's nearby” 

Carmilla’s hand which had lifted slightly into the space between them, fell to her side

“Yeah,” she said. 

 

* * *

 

 

Laura couldn’t think, could barely contain the roar of her thoughts as she swam through the palace, a whirlpool of grief and anger. Confusion. A few hours ago she'd been messing around with Carmilla, happier than she'd felt in years and now she barely knew which way was up and which was down.

“Dad!” She stormed into the throne room “I just saw Vordenburg and the Summer Guards outside with _nets._ What the hell is going on?”

“Laura-“

 “How could you let this happen. How can you be okay with this!”  Her tail thrashed back and forth in her agitation, churning up ripples around her and she clenched her hands into fists.  “Have you forgotten about Mom?! Did that mean NOTHING to you?”

“Laura!” It was quiet but the despair in it carried. Laura halted. She took in his posture properly for the first time, head in his hands where they rested against the table. The room empty. “Listen. We’re on the brink of war now. The Mershark princess is missing and their queen thinks we’re responsible.”

She had the sudden sensation of being inside the current again, hurtling towards a future she couldn’t control.

“What“ -her voice sounded strange and foreign to her own ears, as if heard from miles away- “what is the Mershark princess called?”

“Carmilla Karnstein.”

Laura’s heart stopped.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes:  
> downgwylgos - a deep jungle aka The Tief Urwald  
> moryow - the seas  
> clearwater - open ocean

**Author's Note:**

> References: The language called Common in this fic is English, while High Mermish is Cornish. 'Zennor' is also from a Cornish tale about mermaids
> 
> my tumblr is howmanygreenherons if you want to see the tags with inspiration for these fics, leave fic prompts/asks or just chat


End file.
